promises in pencil
by closingdoors
Summary: A sequel to 'heart so helpless'. The eight years Castle and Beckett spend alone after the trial, and the struggles to overcome their past, the murders, and the mess they left behind. "How could Castle have ever fallen in love her, a woman with such a mad, broken soul?" Cover art by half0utloud.
1. Chapter 1

So slowly I'm losing who I've sworn to be,  
a promise in pencil that years have made so hard to read,  
I've spent my life building walls brick by brick and bruise by bruise,  
a birdcage religion that whispered me to sleep.  
- Birdcage Religion, Sleeping at Last

* * *

**Disclaimer:** I'm fairly certain that Castle is an American show owned by a huge corporation and I'm merely a 17 year old English girl who doesn't know how to make coffee.

5 months later, and here's the sequel you all asked for. This begins in Kate's time in the psychiatric ward, before she and Castle meet again. Huge shoutout to half0utloud for making the wonderful cover art.

* * *

There are no cures to fix her brain.

This is the first thing that her therapist at the psychiatric hospital, Doctor Burke, tells her.

But that's jumping ahead. Skipping the parts in between. The parts between seeing Castle for the last time and being taken to this hell hole, filled with people just like her. But those dark moments are hard to go back to. Because she never really said goodbye.

"There is no cure. But Sociopathy can be managed, Kate." Burke tells her, all calm, low tones to his voice.

Managed.

What a stupid phrase.

"As for your depression-"

"Depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain." Kate recites, remembering words from the therapist that had treated her after her mother's death.

Burke tilts his head.

"That's a hypothesis."

"Nothing is certain." Kate says absentmindedly. "Not really. But people still act like they are. So why make any exception for a hypothesis?"

Burke's lips twitch just the slightest.

Kate thinks that perhaps she might learn to like Doctor Burke. If she could ever feel anything at all.

* * *

So. How she found herself in this Hell hole.

Cuffs. Clinking chains. Hands wrapped around her arms.

They take her away from Castle.

The last time that she sees him, he looks ready to break, despite the nod he sends her way; despite the way she smiles at him beneath her hair; despite the way his fist curls around her note to him. He thinks he holds it together but he doesn't. She wants to break free and wrap him up in her arms, whisper into his hair again and again that she loves him. She needs this. She needs to suffer for what she's done. She's _sorry_. So sorry. She wishes he'd never been involved in any of it.

Her mouth opens to speak the words, but they get stuck. The officers push her down the stairs. And she never gets her closure.

He gets his note. He gets her love. He gets his closure.

She gets this. A grey corridor, clinking cuffs, passing through barred gates until she reaches the prison van.

Blood on her hands.

She gets this.

* * *

Between the courthouse and the prison van, there are reporters. Vultures. Each and every single damn one of them. With their yelling, their microphones, hordes crowding around her, pushing in, suffocating and blinding her with their lights.

She stumbles, lead only by the fierce grip of the officer that refuses to let her go. The officer yells at the crowds, forcing her way through. Kate respects that. The voices are too much for her. Too many questions and too many lights.

_How does a successful detective turn into a killer?_

_What do you have to say to the families of your victims?_

_Did you plan on killing Richard Castle too?_

She did.

Once.

(So many times.)

* * *

The hospital is white. Empty.

Corridors that make her shoes squeak. The smell of unbearable cleanliness that makes her nose scrunch, turning her head away as though she can escape it. As though she's not stuck here for an indefinite future.

The nurse she is delivered to is dressed in white too, and if it weren't for the redness of her lips then perhaps she would blend into the wall. The thought makes Kate smirk.

"Clothes off. Change into these. Cops already searched you, but if you have any sharp or dangerous objects, hand them over." She tells your boredly, shoving a pile of clothes at you.

White underwear. White sweat pants. White top. Black ballet flats.

Huh. So it's one of those kinds of hospitals.

She changes out of the orange jumpsuit they'd forced her into. Scowls back at the nurse as her eyes study the scars on her body. Shoves the new outfit on, scratchy against her skin. As she's passing the jumpsuit back to the nurse, she's wondering what kind of ridiculous theories Castle would be coming up with, the stories. She can almost hear him whispering in her ear, childish excitement radiating through his voice. A pang in her heart appears as quickly as it dissipates. No distractions.

The nurse shows her around her new 'home' but Kate doesn't pay attention. There's too many people watching her out of the open hatches in their doors, wide eyes- crazy eyes. Is that what she looks like too?

How could Castle have ever fallen in love her, a woman with such a mad, broken soul?

Finally, she's alone in her new room. Four white walls. With the smallest window that allows light in on one wall, barred on the outside, up high. She hadn't thought those still existed.

A white bed. Scratchy sheets. A bedside table with one drawer. "For your things." The nurse says, as though Kate has anything at all.

The nurse stops at the door. "Doctor Burke will want to see you once he's finished with another patient. I'll come and get you then. Time in the leisure room ends in two hours."

Kate lays down on her back, stares up at the white ceiling.

The nurse leaves.

Just another blur of white.

* * *

Doctor Burke is a calm man, Kate discovers. He ushers her into his office with a smile, gesturing for her to take a seat. He goes through the basics with her. Name, background, why she's here. And then he asks _her _what she'd like to talk about.

There's a beat of silence, and then:

"I almost killed Castle." Kate says quietly.

Doctor Burke sits back in his chair, watching her, assessing. Does he see the crazy in her too? Has she just become another statistic? How can she get back to being normal, the way she was before?

"I love him and I almost killed him. So tell me, Doctor Burke, how I can make this- this sociopathy or whatever the Hell it is _stop_ so I can just be a safe person to be around?"

Burke sighs, sets his pen down against the white paper. His room is the only one with any colour that she's been in so far. Brown, plush chairs, one huge, open window that allows her to see field upon field of green grass. A wooden statue beside her with no face. No identity. Nonetheless, the room is warm, normal. She wants to stay inside this cocoon of a room forever.

"Sociopathy didn't lead you to murder, Kate. Sociopaths are not violent by nature. It's a vastly misunderstood illness." He explains calmly. "But the lack of empathy can make you dangerous. And that's what I hope to help you understand."

"There's got to be a pill or- or something out there. To take the edge off." Kate says, desperate.

Burke nods calmly. "There are. A nurse will explain your medication to you after this meeting. But I think that what's best for you, Kate, is to tackle depression. Then perhaps you'd be one step further in understanding what drove you to all of this."

"Depression isn't what led me to this. I know what did this. Other people forced me into this."

"But if you felt as though you had nothing to live for, why would you bother with anything at all?" Burke questions.

Kate visibly shrinks in her chair, tucking her legs beneath her as she flinches. "I had my mother's case. I had Castle." The tears prick her eyes. "I don't have anything to live for now."

"I can help you. But the question is whether you're ready."

Her shoulder's lift, a half-shrug.

"Castle wouldn't want me anyway. Not after everything I've done. Not after all the public humiliation he'll be faced with." She says dismissively.

Burke is silent for a moment, as though he's waiting for her to continue speaking. When she doesn't, he leans forwards slightly, as though they've made some sort of progress.

"But what do _you _want, Kate?"

Her tearful eyes raise to his.

"I want to suffer. For all the things I've done."

Burke tilts his head to his side. And she understands. She's still not quite sure why they diagnosed her with sociopathy either. She can feel.

In her heart, she can feel.

Guilt. Shame.

And everything unspoken that's reserved for Castle.

* * *

Kate spends a lot of time lying down in her bed. Dinner is optional for her, the nurse doesn't force her into the dining hall, and she spends the rest of the night cradling her empty stomach. Like some sort of self-punishment.

The tears appear infrequently. Her swollen eyes open now and again, finding the room dark, still empty, until suddenly it is light. Morning.

When the nurse comes to the door, she decides that perhaps she will eat breakfast. It's easy. She just has to follow the woman to the dining hall. Simple. The food's already prepared for her. Easy.

But it's _not. _There are others. Other people. As she walks down the corridor, shoes scuffing the linoleum floor, others dressed just like her emerge from their rooms too. They shuffle along with her, and it's too invasive, too suffocating. Her world tilts on its axis for a moment, struck by the surrealism of being surrounded by so many ill individuals.

This will be every day of the rest of her life.

Kate stops, presses every inch of her body against the wall as though she could possibly escape here. This madness.

"I don't belong here." She says, fingernails curling into the wall, pain flaring in her fingers.

She makes a mental note to tell Doctor Burke in their next session. He'll release her. Surely. It looks like perhaps she was meant to go to prison after all.

(Would prison have been so much worse? It's so similar. High, barred windows. Soulless, empty individuals. A hollow ache in her heart.)

"I don't belong here!" She cries out, grabbing a nearby nurse by the arm. Steps forwards and presses her face close to the nurses, because how else will they listen? "Do you hear me? I don't _belong _here."

"Guards! Miss Beckett, let go of me." The nurse says calmly, even as she attempts to jerk her arm away, eyes scanning the room.

"Do you _understand? _I've made a mistake. I- You need to-" Kate struggles with the words, gripping the pale arm of her nurse tightly.

"Guards!"

She remembers how fragile skin is. How easy it is to pierce, to destroy, to burn. The red that blooms brightly, rushing out of skin so fast as though it has been yearning to escape the prison of the body for so long.

"It'll come to ya!" A blur of white yells.

"Miss Beckett, please, you're upsetting the other patients."

Kate presses harder on the skin as the nurse struggles, knowing how it will bruise, the rupturing of blood vessels. How they bloom brightly and dull slowly, changing colours, almost chameleon-like.

"I'm not _crazy._" Kate insists.

She's just not sane.

"Please- You've got to let me out of here. Ask Doctor Burke, he'll tell…"

She doesn't finish her sentence. Because there's a sharp pierce in her arm, and something zig-zags it way eagerly through her own bloodstream, making her mouth dry and the room spin until everything turns to black.

Her dreams are filled with Castle. And he holds her like everything's okay, when nothing ever has been.

* * *

**TBC**

* * *

twitter: _closingdoors (my previous account, extraordinarySK, has been deleted)  
tumblr: instanakaticsboobs


	2. Chapter 2

**promises in pencil**

**For my every-chapter muse. You know who you are.**

* * *

"Is that what they do to everyone in maximum security?" Kate asks, tugging lightly on a strand of her long hair, avoiding Burke's eyes.

"Are you referring to the incident from last week?"

"Incident." Kate repeats, the taste of the word brittle in her mouth. "Yeah, I am."

"Only to those that seem to be causing a danger to themselves and those around them. The staff here are simply trying to help you, Miss Beckett-"

"Kate."

She looks up, meets his eyes. "My name is Kate." She repeats softly.

Burke nods slowly, eyes flicking down to the piece of paper in front of him. His fingers twitch slightly, as though he's about to reach for his pen. They stop twitching as subtly as they had started. Kate wonders for a moment if she's made some progress or if she'll simply continue to keep on going backwards. That's all she's ever done since her mother was killed. Sometimes when she closes her eyes it feels like the world keeps on spinning but she's trapped as a frightened nineteen-year-old girl who doesn't quite know what to do with herself anymore, who feels like everything has split in two and she's falling through the chasm in the middle. With nobody left to save her.

"Okay. Kate." Burke says, nodding. "Do you want to talk about what happened?"

Kate purses her lips, eyes flitting over to the large window in Burke's office. She sees many other patients roaming the grounds, some accompanied by nurses, some in groups, but mostly keeping to themselves. There's a dull ache in her chest as she watches, wondering what it feels like for fresh air to wrap around her body, to feel the sun on her face instead of through a barred window. Strange how she'd taken her freedom for granted before.

"I wasn't a danger to anyone." Kate says simply.

"You physically harassed a nurse, Kate. You upset several other patients. Are you sure you didn't feel any violent tendencies?"

Kate's hands curls into fists, heavy like stone in her lap as her jaw clenches. "I'm not regressing." She says through gritted teeth, continuing to watch outside. "I just needed someone to understand. I don't belong here. I'm not crazy. Please, send me to prison if you have to, so I can still suffer. Just not here. I belong with the waste, with the criminals, the very essence of evil. Not here."

She looks over to Burke, hoping to find some sort of understanding. But his expression remains neutral, inherently objective.

"Would you rather be in prison, Kate?"

Kate looks over to the view outside of the window again. Sighs at the dream of being able to roam, to not have to stick to a schedule, to not be threatened with isolation at the refusal to take her medication. To wear her own clothes and shower without the fear of being walked in on, to see anything other than the four walls of her room.

"Will I ever be able to do that?" Kate says, gesturing to outside. She knows Burke's technique now. He always replies with a question, hoping that she'll reveal more of the puzzle pieces of herself to him so that he can help put them back together again. But she doesn't want to play along anymore.

"That's for minimum security patients with special privileges. Do you understand why you're in maximum security, Kate?"

She almost rolls her eyes at his insistence to question her. Counters his questions with her own, again.

"Yeah, but will I ever be able to have that?"

Burke hesitates before he replies. "Maybe. If you work hard enough. Can you tell me why you'd want to that, Kate?"

If Kate squints when she looks out at the gardens, she can almost see her and Castle wandering hand-in-hand. Not a care in the world except for those in their hearts.

* * *

Castle startles awake with a yell, dripping head to toe in ice cold water, shivering.

"Ah! What the hell?!"

Alexis stands by his bedside, holding the now empty bucket of water, eyebrows raised. "Are you gonna get out of bed?"

He swings his legs over the bed, dripping water onto the floor of his room already. He stares in bewilderment at his daughter as he shivers. His daughter simply looks completely indifferent, staring him down. Since when had Alexis been so- so full of attitude?

"Well I am now that you practically drowned me." Castle deadpans. "I mean, seriously, what the hell, Alexis?"

Alexis sighs, setting the bucket down before gingerly sitting beside him on the bed. Her red hair falls over her shoulders and hides her face from his, his beautiful daughter trying to find space between them. But he tucks her hair behind her ear anyway, because he had abandoned his daughter when he had sworn he never would from the day she was born, and he never wants to be distanced from her again.

"Hey." He says, softer now. "What's wrong?"

Alexis looks up from her lap to him, blue eyes welling with the minutest of tears. He's struck breathless by it for a moment, because his daughter doesn't cry. Not ever. His daughter is strong, or she had been, and if it were not for his actions then perhaps she wouldn't be so world-weary now. Her shoulders would be lighter, not hunched taut, like Atlas.

"I miss you, Daddy."

Her voice is quiet, so he reaches out hesitantly, wrapping a hand around hers. It's limp in his grip.

"I'm right here."

"Physically, yeah. But…" Alexis shrugs, a tear slipping from her eyes. "I don't know. You haven't been the same for a while now."

No. He doesn't- He doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to remember any of it. If he can just stick to staring at Kate's note every night, it's enough. If he can close his eyes and remember how she laughed and how it filled him to the brim, his heart overflowing with this overzealous love for her, it's enough.

He doesn't want to remember how he shot a man to save her life and she covered up for it. That body still hasn't been found. He doesn't want to remember how she murdered in cold blood, the distant look in her eyes as she approached him with a weapon in hand and promised him that she loved him, even as she planned to murder him.

"I thought we talked about this, Alexis." He protests weakly.

"You dance around the subject all the time, Dad. Just like you're doing now." Alexis murmurs, hand gripping his suddenly, eyes burning into his. "And you sleep all the time and never talk or joke or eat and you haven't even noticed that I was accepted into college two days ago. And I want my Dad back. I want you to joke with me and do completely_ stupid_ things for your books and tell me everything will be okay even if you don't know that it will. I want to see you smile again and I hate that she robbed that of you."

"She didn't- Alexis…" His voice is thick with emotion, his words getting stuck somewhere.

"She did. And maybe she didn't mean to do it, and maybe she loved you and you loved her but she's gone now and it's _over, _Dad." Alexis's voice turns gentle suddenly, compassion leaking from her eyes. "I know it's hard to get over. But you've got to try, Dad. You won't get anywhere if you don't try."

They sit in companionable silence for a moment, staring at their laced hands. Her skin is so much more frail compared to his. How can she not understand that all of this, everything that happened and everything that's been caused as a consequence, was all for her? He just didn't want her to get hurt. Now look what he's done. He's ruined everything, not just himself.

He leans into her slightly, smirking when she flinches at his wet clothes. Presses a kiss against his daughter's hair. "I love you, Alexis. More than anything. More than anyone."

"Love you too, Daddy." She whispers, letting him wipe away her tears.

She hasn't done that since she was six.

* * *

She thinks about him between the spaces of every heartbeat.

And the spaces between each blink.

* * *

Castle stands hesitantly before the plain white door, hand raised mid-air. Does he really have the right to be here? He knows that he promised, but he told her a lot of other things too, and he had all these dreams that had never worked out so why on Earth would he torture himself like this by continuing to blur these dreams with reality?

His hand falls to the wooden door regardless. Knocks once. Waits patiently. Knocks again. There's shuffling on the other side of the door so he waits again, hands shoved into his pockets.

The door opens slowly, an elderly man who probably looks older than he is answering the door with a worn, tired face. His facial expression changes once he sees Castle, though, standing up straight and staring at him with eyes of steel. "Yes?"

"Uh, hi, Mr Beckett. I'm Richard-"

"I know who you are, Mr Castle." Jim replies, smirking. "If I'm not mistaken, you're the reason my daughter decided to commit herself to a psychiatric ward for the rest of her life."

"Oh- I- Uh." Castle stammers, face turning a light shade of red.

Jim sighs. "What do you want, Mr Castle?"

Castle looks down at his feet, then back up at Jim once again. The man still glares at him, no matter how sorry he tries to be.

"I-I promised Kate that I'd look out for you while she… I mean, she told me about… I- I don't wanna let her down. Again."

Jim nods slowly, accepting the news.

"Tell me one thing, Mr Castle."

"Anything, sir."

"Did you love her? Did you love my daughter?"

Oh. How could he- Who could ever doubt his love, his devotion, his irrevocable admiration for her?

"I love her. Present tense."

Jim smiles, body language lighter now. He steps back into his apartment. "Come in, Mr Castle."

* * *

She hears the shuffling of feet every now and then, hears the laughter of Mindy, another patient, and her parents in the visitor room. Kate presses her face against the small square gap in her door and watches the nurses bustle past, carrying forms or lost medication and sometimes, the medication they give to patients when they need to be moved to isolation. Kate's witnessed it happen a couple of times in the four months she's been here- The way the patient's knees buckle beneath them so quickly after ingesting it, their eyes falling closed, caught only by the gentle hands of nurses. Sometimes she's not quite sure if that's even legal.

A nurse walking past- Nurse Connelly- spots Kate staring through the door and stops as she passes. "Got a problem, Beckett?"

Kate likes Nurse Connelly. She's direct, and not falsely sympathetic like the other nurses. Sometimes Nurse Connelly will slip her a sleeping pill when she notices how red Kate's eyes are from another sleep of not sleeping, or how hoarse her voice is from a night of screaming about the nightmares.

"Why do Mindy's parents still visit her even though she's crazy?" Kate asks, heart thumping in her chest.

The nurse frowns. "You know you ain't 'sposed to use that word in here."

"And you know how to speak properly, but you don't see me complaining."

Nurse Connelly smirks, moving closer to Kate's door. "You don't have family, Beckett?"

"I do. My Dad. He's on my visitor's list. But we don't… We're distant." Kate says around the lump in her throat.

Nurse Connelly nods slowly. "You miss him? Your Dad?"

"I didn't see him much before I was in this five star joint anyway." Kate drawls, avoiding her emotions.

"And what about that writer guy? You miss him too?"

Kate pushes away from the door, retreating further into her room as the Nurse watches. "Who- Who told you-?"

"You were all over the news, Beckett. Not like I wasn't ever gonna find out." She tilts her head. "Do you miss him?"

"They wouldn't let me put him on my visitor's list." Kate whispers, nails digging into her palms.

"Well, I ain't gonna say I'm surprised, Beckett. You pulled one hell of a stunt with that guy. Ain't exactly ethical. Not that I blame you, I'da done anything to have my wicked way with him too."

Kate shakes her head from side to side, at a loss for words. She likes direct, but not invasive, and this is bordering on harassment. Nurse Connelly isn't her therapist. She doesn't have the right to comment on such personal things, and Kate doesn't have to share anything with her. Just because they're amicable and sometimes she makes her smile, it doesn't make them friends.

No, she lost her friends a long time ago. She hadn't asked to have them put on her visitor's list. She knew that they wouldn't come. And even if they had, she would probably refuse to see them anyway.

Nurse Connelly smirks, walking on and tossing over her shoulder, "See ya, Beckett."

Kate crawls under the covers of her bed and remembers the way Castle's skin had felt against hers, just right, like home.

And not for the first time, she wonders where he is, if he's found someone new, if he even thinks of her anymore. The damaged woman with a ghost heart.

Drifting, endlessly.

* * *

**TBC**

* * *

twitter: _closingdoors  
tumblr: instanakaticsboobs


	3. Chapter 3

**promises in pencil  
**

Personal problems have prevented me from having the ability to write anything. I'm sorry. I hope that hasn't interfered with what I've managed. Remember, with every chapter we grow one step closer to a Caskett reunion.

* * *

She wakes from a nap to the sound of banging, disorientated for one moment before her eyes adjust and she recognizes the same grey four walls she's adjusted to seeing every day for the past six months. For a moment she thinks the nurse is waking her for dinner or possibly for ten minute checks- the checks had grown outrageously frequent since another inmate three doors down from her had tried to slit their throat with a bed spring. But then, with a jangle of keys, Nurse Connelly opens the door and spills the corridor light across Kate's eyes.

She flinches, holding a hand up. "What d'ya want?" She slurs, half-asleep. One of the side effects of her medication.

"You've got a visitor, Beckett. C'mon. Up'n at 'em."

Kate swings her feet from the bed, stretching before she stands. "But you've not given me a chance to get changed into my party dress." She drawls.

"My apologies, Cinderella. C'mon."

Kate shoves her shoes on and shuffles after the nurse, brushing her hair from her face with her fingers. It's longer than she's ever had it. Limp, lifeless, probably from the medication or the not-so-nutritious meals that she's been forced to suffer with here. Or perhaps from how she rarely showers, fearing someone will walk in on her in the shower that doesn't lock- for safety reasons, though that doesn't feel safe to her at all.

Connelly opens the door to the visitor's room, squeezes Kate's elbow lightly. "Listen, Beckett... Someone's always gonna love you. Even if you're crazy."

Kate studies Connelly, the pale arc of her cheekbones, the light bulge of her blue eyes. She's a beautiful woman. Too beautiful for a place like this, filled with so many dark, lost souls. Maybe there's a story to her. A reason why she's here, instead of a place where she fits in, where she belongs. Castle would know her story. Just like he practically knew hers from the beginning. Castle always knew.

"Maybe if I'm crazy. But not when I'm a murderer. Never then." Kate mumbles, throat tight.

Connelly nods slowly. "You ain't like the others, Beckett. Don't let 'em tell you any different."

And then she nudges Kate through the door.

Jim Beckett waits patiently by one of the barred windows, the only giveaway of his nerves the gentle tap of his fingers against the windowpane. Kate stares, transfixed for a moment, at her father. Her gentle, alcoholic father. Softened at the edges by the dull light that leaks through the window, world-weary in the tension of his shoulders, still hopeful by the tilt of his lips when he registers her presence.

He turns, slowly, and it's then that Kate realises she hasn't seen her father in- Well, she doesn't know. Years. Maybe. He hadn't turned up to her trial. She had never expected him to. And she hadn't seen him in person before that since she'd left New York. Always too busy ignoring his drunken calls to care. She doesn't deserve her father's love. Not now.

His eyes are kinder than they used to be.

"Hey, Katie."

No judgement. No resentment. Like he's speaking to the innocent, hopeful 19 year old version of herself that she had lost a long time ago.

"Daddy." She chokes out, and then she's in his arms.

He wraps her like a child in his arms, like he's trying to reverse everything, holding her so tightly it feels like she's being suctioned from this world and to one more peaceful. Far more innocent. Free. She likes it and so she snuggles deeper, thinking that maybe her father's hug could reverse this whole thing, remove her from this planet, take her somewhere warm. How long has it been since she was loved?

"I'm sorry." She sobs out, hands fisting in his jacket. "I'm sorry, Daddy. I'm so sorry."

"Shh, Katie." His hands are so still against her cheek, capturing tears. Why aren't they shaking? Where's the alcoholic she used to know? "There's nothing to be sorry for."

She hiccups a laugh against his shoulder. "Not the murders?"

She feels the tension wrap around him like a forgotten blanket, drowning the both of them in freezing water. He pulls away from her as quickly as he had gathered her in his arms, taking several steps backwards before stopping. She lets out a breath she hadn't realised she had been holding. Maybe he's not so different after all.

"You used to cry on my shoulder about boys."

A thinly veiled jab at her mental state.

"Are you still drinking, Dad?" She counters.

His eyes are kinder. But they're so tired. Her own drift close for a moment, just looking at them.

"No. But I can't promise I'll stay off it. It's not your fault, Katie."

"I know. I know you try, Dad."

Her eyes open again when she feels a touch on her hand. Her father squeezes her hand lightly, attempting at a reassuring smile.

"It's not your fault, Katie. It never was."

Her throat is dry when she tries to speak, a scratchy noise emitting from her lips that doesn't make any sense. She closes her mouth and simply nods, the protest dying too quickly, guilt settling too deeply in her lungs. She doesn't want to fight. She is just so tired of fighting, all the time, and it gets her nowhere. Just four grey walls and a man who thinks that there's something wrong with her brain that staying here could possibly fix.

Sometimes when she cannot sleep she stands and when she presses her hands against the wall-

She pulls them away to find blood handprints lingering. Scarlet. Bold. The blood never fades, no matter how much she scrubs her skin, tries to wash it away with her tears and her sweat and everything else that falls between.

"I'm sorry I've taken so long to visit, Katie."

She blinks, slowly coming back to the present.

"But I'm glad that you gave yourself up. I'm glad you stopped."

She sniffs, wiping at her wet cheeks with her sleeve, feeling it scratch against her skin. "I'm glad too. I… Dad, I caught the guy. I caught Bracken. He killed Mom."

Emotion scratches Jim's eyes, but he simply smiles, squeezing her shoulders. Like he doesn't want to talk about it. Like there's nothing to talk about. When really it drove him to the bottom of a bottle and it consumed her whole life. Lead them to this. Two fractured souls who had lost the pieces to fix themselves a long time ago.

"I thought it would feel different to this. I thought it…" She blinks desperately, willing the tears not to fall anymore. "I just thought it would feel different."

Jim nods slowly, moving away and to the window again. Effectively ending their, ultimately one-sided, conversation on Johanna.

Her father is quiet when he speaks. "About Castle…"

She backs away quickly, shaking her head, his name setting fire to her insides.

"I don't want to talk about him."

"Just tell me one thing, Katie."

"One thing?"

"One thing and then I'll drop it."

She breathes in. Out. Like Burke told her.

"Okay. One thing."

"Did you love him?"

She looks down, picks at the loose thread of her sleeve. How does she explain how his name is setting fire to her insides, that she can feel it burning away at everything, the flames licking her heart, so that he knows she is the only one she ever thinks about? How can she explain that they were only ever lovers for one night but she could see a future she knew they could never have in his eyes? How can she explain that she would do anything- absolutely _anything- _to have any other life but this one so that she could make him happy, instead of destroying everything in his life? How could all of that be summed up in one word? Love.

Huh. The semantics of it all.

"Still do, Dad." She eventually replies. "Still do."

* * *

The FBI- who had handled Kate's case- never allowed him his Nikki Heat plans back. Nor the drafts of things he'd written. They'd claimed it was evidence. They'd even taken the file he'd started creating the night he'd met her. No matter how many strings he'd tried to pull, he couldn't get them back.

"You think she'd mind?"

Jim looks up from his coffee, across to Castle who sits on the other side of the café table. His hands are shaking today. Castle doesn't have much hope that the man will stay away from the drink. Something like guilt slivers into his heart. He's failing Kate. Even after all this time. Failing her time and time again.

"No… No, I don't think she would."

So after eight months of her being away and trying to get his life back together, he finally sits before his laptop and presses keys that make the words appear. He knows more now. He knows her story. He knows her old friends, he knows where she is now, and maybe he doesn't know when she'll get out.

But he knows he won't see her again.

So he plans and drafts and begins to write the story she was supposed to have. A successful detective. Surrounded by friends. Loved. Searching for answers. Seeking.

Finding him.

Falling in love. Freely.

Even if she had never planned that along the way.

* * *

"How are you feeling today, Kate?"

Kate's lips form a watery smile as she looks over at Burke.

"Jumbled."

"Jumbled. Did you not sleep last night, Kate?"

She shakes her head, feeling the tips of her hair brush against her elbows. "No. Not one bit."

Honesty. It's the only thing that keeps her sane in this place. Sometimes it feels like Burke is the only one that's listening to her. But then again, when would she ever listen to anyone else's problems in this Hell hole? No. She's selfish. She always has been. Doctor Burke is a saint. A sense of hope. He's the only one here that sees something in her other than a mental illness that she can't control. She is not her illness. She is human.

And she is as vulnerable as any other.

"Why don't you sleep, Kate?"

"Sometimes. In my dreams." She looks down at her hands. Everything is fractured. Nothing. Lasting. "I do it. Again. I kill. So many innocent people. Their blood on my hands. On my wall. And I like it. I love it."

Burke's silent, assessing her, or perhaps waiting for her to offer more information. To make sense. But doesn't he see that she can't make sense of it herself? If she could stop feeling this way. She would. But she is jumbled. Thoughts tumbling through her that don't make sense, ones she doesn't want to feel, some sick desires occurring to her when she stares at the fragile skin of other inmates as they eat.

"I don't want to kill." She whispers, hands shaking, so she balls them into fists.

"Would you kill again, Kate? If you were given the chance?"

She stares, unseeing, through the window. Tears blur her vision.

"Kate?"

"I don't know. I-I don't know."

Burke says nothing, so she volunteers more information.

"It's been a year since I came here."

A year since she had last seen Castle. Across a room. Content with her goodbye. Over a year since she had last touched him, smelt him, felt the way he moved against her skin, the way he tasted on her tongue. But years since freedom. Or was Castle freedom? He hadn't freed her. This had all happened. Or was this freedom? Recovering? Was it freedom? It doesn't feel like freedom. It feels jumbled.

She closes her eyes against the tide of emotions. Maybe it will all just go away.

Maybe she will, too. Maybe she could just. Stop. Become nothing.

"Kate, you've made excellent progress since you've been here. You're one of my finest patients. I don't believe that what you're experiencing is a relapse."

"But-"

"Everybody has days where they feel like the world is moving without them. That they're moving backwards while everything else carries on like it should. While your experience is far more serious, it's okay to feel this way."

She opens her eyes. "It's okay to want to kill people?"

Burke smiles. "It's okay to be afraid."

Kate's mouth opens but nothing comes out, and she closes her eyes.

Every day. She is afraid.

Afraid of not getting better. Afraid of being stuck here forever.

Afraid of getting better. And facing the real world. A world without Castle. Because she couldn't ever drag him back into this, not even if he wanted to be with her. Could she?

* * *

She's moved out of maximum security three months later.

* * *

**TBC**

* * *

**Twitter:** _closingdoors  
**Tumblr:** instanakaticsboobs


	4. Chapter 4

**promises in pencil**

I love you all. I really do.

* * *

"No, Paula." Castle grits out.

"Oh c'mon, Ricky. Think of the sales, the publicity-"

"I've already had enough publicity when it comes to Kate. Enough to last a lifetime." Castle says morosely, mind flitting back to the paparazzi that had hounded him during the trial. Had said such _horrible _things about Kate. Things he won't forget.

The paparazzi still linger. Sometimes. They always will do, due to his fame. But even now, almost two years later, the occasional reporter will approach him. For an exclusive interview. Or a statement. Something to clear what really happened. Tell the world all. And all he wants to do is remove that from his life, and the only way of doing so is with this book. Heat Wave. Well, a series. He already sees the veins of the life she was supposed to have stretching before him, unraveling him and the only way he will survive is by using his words, their blood, to pump life through what was forgotten. What had never happened. But should have.

"Honestly, after the stunt you've pulled, you can't be surprised they're trying to do this to you." Paula, his publicist, says as she places her purse on the kitchen counter. "You're lucky they're going to publish that book, anyway."

He laughs at that one. "Yeah, right. Paula, they've practically bent over backwards to make sure they could get this. The money…" He shakes his head with a sigh.

Paula pouts. "Okay, okay, so you've still got a thing for the chick. But, Ricky, it's a brilliant idea. With the release party on the same day, you could get it all out of your system, there's always a blonde willing-"

"No!" He cries, spinning to look at her with wide eyes. "Dammit Paula, I said no!"

He refuses to be stuck in a room. Dressed up. With people he doesn't know. Stuffy businessmen and glamorous businesswomen. On the second anniversary of Kate's sentence. Surrounded by blonde women who only want him to sign their chests, who flutter their eyelashes, trying to make him fall in bed with them like he would've done before Kate. But it would be betraying her.

As the release date for Naked Heat approaches, he finds his thoughts steadfastly focused on her. Especially after they'd forced him to place a heated scene into the book, claiming it would be perfect for the characters, it would be the Richard Castle they used to know before all of this happened. And he couldn't stop thinking about her skin. So soft and lovely and interrupted with scars. The way it tasted against his tongue. The smooth, warm curves of her, how there was still more of her to map. Every map starts out empty, after all.

And then these thoughts bring him to her smile. A little cracked around the edges. Her eyes. Just a little too haunted. How in that one night with her he could feel. Everything.

And it had all been taken away from him.

"Sorry. I'm sorry, Paula, I shouldn't have yelled." He says, breaking himself from his stupor. Paula's still eyeing him warily. "Did Gina send you?"

Paula shrugs. "You weren't answering her calls. It's not like I enjoy doing her work for her."

He pinches the bridge of his nose. Breathes in and out and then in again. One for luck. "Okay. Okay, I'll call her and sort things out. But it's not being released that day. You hear me?"

Paula grabs her purse, rolling her eyes. "Fine."

She stops before she reaches the door. Turns to him. "She says she needs the dedication by tomorrow morning at the latest."

He nods. "Got it."

She hesitates again. Genuine concern fills her eyes. "Are you okay, Rick?"

His heart constricts for a moment. Knowing all these people that he's known for such a very long time care about him. And all he ever does is wallow. Never living. Just existing through the words on the printed page.

"Yeah." He says. "Yeah, I'm fine."

It may just be the biggest lie he's ever told.

* * *

He comes up with the dedication at 3am the next day. Looking at a photo of a fresh-faced Kate Beckett, recently graduated from the academy, that her father had given him. He can't stop thinking about how wonderful she could've been. Her eyes. Haunted but not with the ghosts that seep blood onto her hands now. Recovering. Not falling.

Extraordinary.

_To the extraordinary KB._

All the beautiful prose. Poetry. All if it on this planet. None of it could ever explain that tight feeling in his chest when she smiled at him. Like maybe. Just maybe. Everything could be alright. Until it wasn't.

* * *

It's not her fault.

It's not her fault that she was placed in solitary.

"Kate?"

She doesn't look up at Doctor Burke. Continues to stare at that dark stain on the carpet, wondering how it got there. Was it another patient? Did they knock something over? Was it an accident? Was it on purpose? How violent was it? Was there blood?

How can she stop herself from seeing blood, all the time?

"I don't want to talk about it." Kate mutters disdainfully.

Burke's quiet for a moment, and finally she lifts her gaze, over to the window. Stares at the others in the garden. She _loved _having that privilege. She had been able to wear her own clothes. Only had hourly checks. Her medication had been reduced, she'd been less fuzzy in her mind, less nauseous. And she could roam the gardens and feel the sun on her face and pretend that Castle was there. With her. All it took was to close her eyes. Imagine his phantom hand in hers. Like two normal individuals, stuck still while the Earth keeps spinning.

Now that she's been in solitary, those privileges have been revoked. Half-hour checks, her medication being considered changed, having to walk around the gardens in a group with a nurse. She's not been moved back to maximum security, but deep down in her heart, she is absolutely terrified that they'll move her back there.

"Kate, I think it would be in your best interest to talk about the incident."

"In almost two years there have only ever been two incidents. One on my second day of being here. And this recent one _wasn't _caused by me-"

"Then who was it caused by, Kate?"

Damn. He has her there. She chuckles, simultaneously outraged but completely tired of it. This place. Burke. Missing Castle. Every day.

"Carly Reed. She started it."

Her lips quirk. She sounds like a kid in middle school.

How her heart aches to be there again. She would make so many different choices. Stupid, meaningless ones. Like not letting that boy feel under her top just because her friends told her she should. Revising for that calculus test instead of cramming that morning, resulting in a C-. But the bigger things too. Telling her Mom she loved her more often than she ever did, instead of brushing her off and acting the teenager façade. Preventing herself from getting too involved in her Mom's case, from allowing it to be so destructive that she loses her job and becomes- this.

And Castle.

Well, she'd never have ruined him at all.

"How did she cause the incident, Kate?"

Kate huffs, finally turning to Burke. "It was over medication. She found that I was being given sleeping pills and she had been rejected them when she'd asked for them. That was it."

Burke nods slowly. Silence.

She rolls her eyes. "We were at the nurse's station, collecting our medication. So that's when she noticed and she tried to grab for them. I made her back off."

Burke checks one of the pieces of paper he has jumbled between various forms. Her record. Huh. As though her record could be any more tainted than it has been by the fraud, the murders. This is nothing. This is not a relapse. She will not go back to that. She must get better. At least, that's what she thought she had to do. Now she's not so sure. She doesn't know the outside world, and most of her doesn't _want _to get to know it.

Here… It's not the best. Her windows have to be opened by a nurse and they open so minutely that only her fingers wedged between the frame and the windowpane can feel any breeze. And the food makes her stomach feel empty, no matter how much she eats. And most nights the only thing preventing herself from ripping apart the bedsheets and making herself a noose is the thought of being caught and being placed on suicide watch. All privileges revoked. And she spends most of her time tucked up in her room with a journal so that she can avoid the others, the ones that yell, the ones that throw fits and can't control their minds.

But. She always has a bed. And routine. And the nurses may be cold- she misses Nurse Connelly, had been sad to say goodbye when she'd left maximum security- but they care for her, they give her the medication she needs and make sure she's occupied and some try to make small talk with her. And Doctor Burke listens to any thing she says. Pries her emotions open gently, until they're all flooding out and it's like being relieved of the weight of the world, like Atlas.

It's the closest to home she's had since she was 19.

"According to my records, Kate, Carly wound up with a hairline fracture and a broken arm. That's a big leap from making her, as you said, back off. The nurses that tried to stop you also received a bloody nose and the other fractured ribs."

She swallows nervously. Closes her eyes. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Kate, I thought that you'd learned that repressing your emotions only worsen your situation."

She pries one eye open nervously. Stares into his honest eyes. "Will you move me back to maximum security? Put me back in isolation?"

He doesn't ever answer questions, Burke, so she's not surprised by his response. "Do you feel I ought to recommend you're placed back there?"

She shudders. Feels the cold, the dread, seep down her spine slowly until her spine is encased with ice. Never. Never does she want to go back there.

"I stopped myself, and that's what matters. Isn't it?"

"Stopped yourself from what, Kate?"

"From- From my old habits. God, it was just… I never enjoyed it. I didn't. Killing. Not like… Not how Sociopaths are supposed to. Not like that category they've put me in. But after a while, it didn't matter that much. After a while, it was just a job, and I convinced myself that they deserved it. And for a moment, my mind, with Carly- I was convinced she deserved it. But once that nurse started bleeding… I stopped."

She confesses it all in a whisper. Because if she says these words, that makes them true.

"You're right. You did stop. And that does matter." Burke sets a pen down on his paper. "But do you believe you'd still be capable of that level of violence, Kate? Murder?"

The tears scratch away at her eyes until she has no choice but to let them fall. Damn it. Damn it all, this stupid life, this hospital, Burke. Herself. She wants any life but this one. To be anyone but herself.

"I never thought I could do it in the first place. Until I did. And then it stopped mattering. And then it was nothing."

She thinks. Maybe.

It still is.

* * *

He and Jim sit in his car like they always do when Jim visits Kate. Only, this time, Jim Beckett is holding a book. Heat Wave.

It's been two and a half years since she had been taken away from him and every day Castle feels his heart numb just a little bit more. Dull in colour, through his blood, spreading it through his veins until he is grey on the inside. Hope lacking.

"_Please, _Rick." Jim says into the silence of the car. "It would benefit her. So much. She talks about you every time I visit her."

He looks over at the man, greying, hands still shaking because of the alcohol. Castle understands why Kate was always so tired of the man's alcoholism now. It hurts to watch. To watch him destroy himself and make empty promises that he'll get better.

It must be a Beckett thing.

"She'll know I've been meeting up with you regularly. And, while I promised her I'd watch out for you… I think that would kill her."

"She would be grateful-"

"She'd figure it out. That I bring you here each time. Being so close to her, just outside the damn hospital, kills me as it is. It would destroy her, sir."

Jim is silent, staring at the book he holds in his hands.

"So why am I giving her this book? How will that make anything better for her? There's nothing personal about this. Your names aren't even the same in here."

"It has… Everything."

Jim sighs. "Just sign the damn book. _Please. _If you ever loved her."

No. _No. _He will not play up to that.

"I'm doing this because I love her. Because those words in that book… They're all I have for her. I was never enough. And I have nothing left to say."

Jim breathes quietly in the silence, but it fills up all the room. "I thought that you would wait forever for my daughter, Rick."

"It's a finite world we live in, Jim." He says. Stares straight ahead at the plain, unassuming building. "Nothing lasts forever."

But. Always.

Always exists.

* * *

She cannot believe her eyes when her father passes her the book.

"This is an advanced copy. It's being released next week."

She holds it in her hands, feels the weight of it, the glossy cover of the hardback. But it doesn't feel real. When does she wake up from this dream?

"Castle gave this to you?" His name cracks into two on her tongue.

Her father nods hesitantly. "Yes. Yes, he gave it to me."

She blinks back the tears rapidly, feeling her heart burst inside her chest. Into stars. Constellations. Infinite.

"He lookin' out for you, Dad?"

"Well, I… I'd say he's looking out for the both of us."

"Yeah." She agrees, cradling the book to her chest. Precious. Hope. Light. "Yeah, that's Castle."

Her father smiles. "Check the dedication, Katie."

Her numb, shaking fingers pry the book open slowly, as she holds her breath. Her father hovers over her, waiting for the worst. A terrible reaction. Disappointment, maybe. Guilt. Maybe all of those things she feels every day. Hanging over her like an oppressive weight. But not now. Now she's free. This. It's more. Than she could ever explain. It's fractured her. Rendered her. Speechless. Nervous. Like a teenager on her first date.

The words appear and they will never leave her.

_To the extraordinary KB._

A sob escapes her, but when her father attempts to hold her in his arms, she steps away from his embrace. Constellations dusting across her insides, setting everything from dark to light. Like a switch that she had never figured out how to switch on.

She smiles so brightly it's a wonder her face doesn't split in two.

"If you see him again. Castle. Tell him… Tell him I said thank you."

Jim watches her carefully. "Just thank you?"

Her teardrops land on the words. "For everything. Always."

* * *

His heart is pounding when Jim appears from the doors, clambering back into the car. He doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Doesn't even dare breathe.

"She said thank you. For everything. Always."

What he wouldn't do to hear those words in person. To feel them wrap around his heart with the lilt of her voice, probably tight with tears she'd pretend don't exist. To see her smile. Those eyes as she looks at him. Just one more time.

Oh, what he wouldn't do.

* * *

**TBC**

* * *

**Twitter: **_closingdoors**  
Tumblr: **instanakaticsboobs**  
**


	5. Chapter 5

**promises in pencil**

I go back to school as of Wednesday. Updates will probably be slower due to that. My apologies, I hope you continue to enjoy this nonetheless. Thank you.

* * *

This is every day for the rest of her life:

Collect medicine from the nurse's station.

Resist the urge to ask for another sleeping pill. The nightmares are just as horrible as reality.

Breakfast.

Avoid the eyes of the others.

Stare. The wall of the room is interesting.

Lunch.

Call her Dad. Organise another visit.

Don't ask him about his drinking.

Recreational room.

Ignore the group.

Pay attention to whatever whack-job they've hired to encourage the group his time.

Dinner.

Sit. Stare. The wall.

It's so interesting.

Write in her journal.

_Don't sleep. Don't you dare dream, Beckett._

If she dreams.

Just for a moment.

There's blood. Her hands. And not much else.

* * *

Sliding a hand under his pillow, he gently rouses from his slumber, fingers closing around the photograph that he finds. Every morning, or afternoon, he has the same routine. He hadn't meant to create it. But then. Looking down at a photo of Kate from before… Everything. It's the best way to start his day.

There's something terrible in the way there's not a photo of the two of them together. How they were. Almost like they had never happened at all.

Memories are fragile.

How long can he keep clinging onto her? These memories? Even now, three years later, the way that she smelled is beginning to escape him. And which corner of her mouth was it that twitched when she was entertained by him but trying not to show it? He doesn't know anymore. He always thought that he would remember. He didn't think that the memories would seep from him so quietly, so minutely, that he wouldn't notice until he had almost bled himself dry with them.

He pulls himself out of bed and heads straight towards his laptop. Ignores the questions that burn through him every night, every morning, in between. Hides himself in Nikki Heat like he always does.

After all, what he lacks in memory, he can redeem in imagination.

* * *

"He wrote a book about me." She says, staring at her hands.

Although she was nowhere near healthy in her diet before, she hates this place for how unfit she's become. There's nowhere to run. She can't run. Even before her darkest days, she was always up running before work, enjoying passing through the city as it woke, gentle hues of orange and yellow settling across the sky. And while the food here may be healthier than what she used to have, it's still not enough. Her skin is still pale. And she's not as strong.

She is never. Quite. Enough.

"You told me, Kate. When your father gave it to you."

"I haven't read it."

Burke pauses. Trying to gauge her emotions, she supposes. "I see. Why is that, Kate?"

"I… I can't do it. I know that I should. It's been two years since it was published, I've been here for four years- It's my only link to him. And. I can't do it."

"You told me that you liked the dedication. You told me that his words were your saviour when your mother was killed. What's changed?"

Honesty leaks from her in Burke's room. She's never sure what it is. If it's the warm, gentle and open feel of the room, if it's the neutral tone of Burke's voice, or whether it's the fact that she has nobody anymore. Her therapist is the only person she can unburden herself with. She couldn't say these things to her Dad. Not when she knows how he's falling deeper and deeper into alcohol with every second she spends here. Her fault. It's all her stupid, selfish fault.

"I'm not enough." She says, hands trembling so she fists them in her lap, as though she can fight the physical evidence of her fright. "I'm not enough and I know he's just going to write the version of the person he wants me to be, the person he thought I could be. He always had this hope, you know? It's something that… Something that I loved about him. But that hope's dangerous."

"Why is it dangerous, Kate?"

"_Because. _What if he thinks he- that I- that we're going to _be_ something afterwards? We said goodbye. I can't go back to him. I'm never gonna be enough, and I'm never gonna be fixed. I'm always gonna be this way. I'm not enough, and to know that- that he has all this hope still, that I'll be able to see in his words and the way he writes about me… Like I'm more. But I'll never be more. I…"

Words. Why can't they come as easily to her as they do to him?

"Kate. I think you underestimate how much you've achieved here."

She scoffs, eyes trailing around the room. Anywhere but at Burke. Funny, that. Honesty bleeds from her here. But she won't tell him about the dreams anymore. Because in her dreams… Sometimes _he's_ there. Burke. And her hands are around his neck and his life is draining from him. And it feels _good. _To rid him of the power that he wields over her. It feels so frustratingly, gorgeously good.

"You've made excellent progress, Kate. And I think what you need to do is stop comparing yourself to what other people expect of you."

She bristles. "Castle's not just another-"

"Kate." Burke's voice is smooth, soft. Lures her in. "What do _you_ want?"

Her heart withers pathetically in its cage. She curls in on herself. She wants. So much. She wants to be out of here. She wants her old life back.

(Sometimes she doesn't know what 'her old life' is. Her days as a young girl with her mom, or as a cop, or as a murderer? She doesn't know. She doesn't know. She doesn't know.)

She wants Castle. Always. But that will never be, because she'll never let that happen, no matter how much hope he may or may not hold.

"I want…"

Burke's voice is so calm again. "What do you want for yourself, Kate? Free of other people?"

"I want… I want to be more than who I am." She whispers hoarsely, pulling her legs up onto the soft armchair and settling her chin atop her knees. "But I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to move on."

"I can help you, Kate."

She lifts her eyes to Burke.

"Are you ready?"

Something settles in her rhapsodic heart that hasn't since she was nineteen.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think I am."

* * *

It's the last time that he's ever going to bring Jim Beckett to this hospital.

There are no words exchanged on the way there beside small talk, comments on the weather, the song playing on the radio. The man leaves the car without glancing back at Castle, disappearing through the hospital doors. It often leaves Castle speechless, how unassuming this place is. If it weren't for the gates at the end of its driveway, the sign outside, he never would've made the assumption that this place is for the mentally unstable.

He ponders on that more often than he really ought to. Mentally unstable. What separates him from Kate's state of mind? What prevents it? Or is there really any difference at all? Perhaps everyone is broken in their own ways, but some far more quietly than others, unlike Kate's inexorable, dangerous suffering. He often wonders: If she had never killed anyone at all, would she have ever been locked up here, or would she have been left to bask in the undiluted torture of her thoughts?

He's never thought it fair. That one person with a fancy degree could ask Kate a few simple questions and look at her behaviour and determine whether there's something wrong with her or not. Wrong? There's nothing wrong with Kate. Other people made her this way. It was never herself. Never herself.

Jim emerges from the hospital after an hour of Castle waiting for him. There's a stiffness in his shoulders that wasn't there before, a certain shake in his hands that has nothing to do with his drinking habits. Castle waits until the man has settled into the car before he speaks.

"She knew something was off?"

Jim breathes in, out, in again. "Yeah." He releases on a whisper of a breath.

"She's… So smart." He smiles, a little bittersweet, at that. "Jim, you have a beautiful daughter. A beautiful, intelligent, funny, charming, daughter. Be proud of that. Hold onto that."

Jim's eyes- normally so gentle, so accepting of the world around him- fill with anguish when he turns to Castle.

"Rick, my daughter is _mad._ She's in- She's in a place like this, and you expect me to find those qualities within her? When she hugs me and I try not to think about all the ways she's killed people with those hands?"

"She's better than that. You know it- She wouldn't have come forward as guilty if she hadn't wanted to get better." Castle says, a fierce slice of defensiveness oozing through him.

"I love her. God, don't doubt that Rick. I would do anything for her." Jim says fiercely. "But what separates her from the man that killed her mother?"

Castle turns, grips Jim's shoulder in his palm. Tight. He's too close to anger to respect this man now, as his elder, as Kate's dad. No time for manners. Not when he's having such foolish thoughts. Not when he sounds as though he's going to give up on Kate, too.

"That man died without remorse." Castle says forcefully, and even if he knows only the barest of scraps about this story, he knows that Kate could never be so cold-hearted. "That man died without caring. And Kate _cares. _Kate is sorry and she wanted to stop and she has and she is _getting better_."

"Rick, you heard the diagnosis, she's a sociopath-"

"_Screw _the diagnosis! She just got lost. There was no-one to guide her. And don't you dare- don't you _dare- _undermine how much your daughter has worked just so she can be normal."

"Forgive me for being unable to accept the words of a hypocrite." Jim says, voice neutral as ever, but the words hit him with all the force of a bullet.

His hand retracts, his body almost curling in on himself. Because Jim knows. And Jim had told him it was okay. Jim had assured him. That it was all okay. That Kate wouldn't be disappointed (oh, how disappointed she would be, no matter how many excuses his desperate heart made).

"Rick, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said-"

"No, I'm sorry, you've every right to be angry-"

"Rick." Jim says calmly, that strong, determined look in his eyes that reminds him so much of Kate. "If you love your daughter half as much as I love my own, I know you'd do anything for her. I understand. You said yourself, Kate didn't expect you to wait around, she wanted this thing between you finished. You've no reason to hold on."

"I still love her. I still love her with everything I am. God, sitting outside of this hospital every Saturday for six years- Jim, it's killed me. Not being able to see her. Hold her. Just hear her voice again. Knowing she's so close…"

Jim smiles. Sad. "I believe you, Rick."

"I'm not giving up. I could never give up."

"But anything for your daughter. I understand. Look where I am, look what I'm doing now. All for Katie."

Castle sighs, wishing his daughter hadn't given him an ultimatum, but knowing at twenty-four now she knows how wretched his life is like this. She's just looking out for him, as he would for her. But still. _It's her or me, Dad. Who are you gonna choose? _Did it have to be so final? But of course Alexis knew that he would choose her. He would never _not _choose her.

What is left for him to hold on, anyway? Kate would never see him after. And he would never force that upon her, in case he damage her in some way he's uncertain of. And after all of this time. He's forgotten so much. He's holding onto scraps of memory. Trying to live it through his books but the voices of his characters don't seem quite right anymore, something about the sarcasm of Nikki too sharp, something about the shade of her hair too wrong.

He remembers bigger things. And maybe that should seem important. He remembers how it sounded when she told him she loved him, or that look in her eye during their last night together in that hospital, like he was everything she had been looking for. But they're not important. Because he's a writer, and he's supposed to remember the little details, and if he can't remember which side of her body her surgical scars were on then what use was his love at all? It dulls in his heart, numbing his every nerve ending. There is no point to feeling if all he ever felt with her has been forgotten.

"I'll visit you, Jim. You're getting away from the drink." Castle tells him quietly.

Jim blanches. "Rick-"

"No. I told you. I'm not giving up on her. I know we can never be together, six years apart has taught me how serious that is. But I still owe her this. To help fix you. Do you have _any _idea how _terrified _she must be for you, Jim? Seeing you, knowing she can't help you, knowing how long she neglected you as you neglected her? I'm doing this. For her."

Jim is quiet so Castle starts the car, slowly heading down the drive. Allowing his eyes to flicker back up to the rear-view mirror, taking one last look at where Kate is being hidden from him.

"You know, in another life, you would've been a great son-in-law, Rick. I would've liked that." Jim says.

There's a clench in Castle's heart, seeping into his smile, and he's not sure if he's being bittersweet when he replies. He only knows they're the only words he has left.

"Yeah. Yeah, I would've liked that too, Jim."

And so life, as life often does-

Moves on.

* * *

_To the extraordinary KB._

She delicately strokes the six year old words with her forefinger, tears in her eyes. This is her favourite dedication. This is her favourite book.

She looks up from where she sits in the corner of the quaint coffee shop, sensing eyes on her. Then again, there are always eyes on her. Despite it being eight years since the trial and the fact that she's practically a whole new person now, people still recognise her. Still judge her. And she doesn't blame them. She judges herself every day.

She finally finds the eyes that have been staring at her.

They are so impossibly blue.

* * *

**TBC**

* * *

**Twitter:** _closingdoors  
**Tumblr:** instanakaticsboobs


	6. Chapter 6

**promises in pencil**

My mind is a mess right now. So are my updates. I don't know why fanfiction didn't work the first time I tried to upload it, but eh, it's here now.

* * *

_She finally finds the eyes that have been staring at her._

_They are so impossibly blue._

* * *

There is a moment in which nothing exists.

There is a moment when the book in her hands turns to dust and the words on the page are written in invisible ink. There's a moment when the colour blue meeting green becomes nothing and the world is black and white and everything is senseless. There is a moment with no pulse, no air, no gravity.

It thunders through her when it returns in a flash of electric light.

The sound of the coffee machines and idle chatter and the rush of Manhattan traffic implodes in her ears when it returns, startling her so much that the book escapes her grip, clatters onto the table and knocks her own coffee over.

She jumps back when the scalding liquid searches for her, leaking over the side of the table. She's grabbing napkins from the stand and attempting to dab up the dark liquid when suddenly he's there, his presence hanging over her heavily, like Earth on Atlas' shoulder's. His hand brushes her elbow gently and she freezes, but then his hands are replacing hers with fresh napkins and his breath brushing her ear and it's all too much at once and god her heart is _racing. _He's here and he's real and if she turned her head right now she could press her lips to his jaw, place her hands around his waist, tell him she never stopped loving him for one damn second.

Kate turns away, rushing to a nearby trashcan to throw the sodden napkins away. Stupid. _Stupid._ Her hands are trembling, as are her lungs and her heart and her legs and she's about ninety per cent certain she's about to pass out.

This was never supposed to happen.

This shouldn't be happening. He shouldn't _be _here. He shouldn't look at her with those blue eyes that made her lose all sense of direction and muddy the waters. She shouldn't have felt that chasm in her heart repairing itself with the quirk of his lips when their eyes had connected for the first time in eight years.

He shouldn't be touching her elbow again, tossing his own napkins in the bin and pressing a new, warm cup of coffee into her hands, his fingers brushing her own without any real need for it. A shiver sluices down her spine but she supresses it, carefully concentrating on the coffee cup instead of looking up at him.

She watches his feet disappear from the corner of her eyes.

And then she follows.

* * *

His heart is racing.

She's- Here.

She's real and she's settling down in the chair opposite him and she is- She is everything all at once.

His mouth is dry, studying her, the curls of her hair. It's shorter now, curls gathering around her shoulders, a couple shades lighter than he remembers- If he remembers correctly at all. She's gained weight, too. A healthy amount. Her cheekbones aren't quite so devastating, skin not so pallid, not looking like paper to touch, to mark, to ink his love for her upon. There are still ghosts in her eyes. But he hadn't ever expected there not to be.

But her eyes are a whole lot greener than he remembers and a whole lot warmer.

She eyes him warily before her eyes dart back down to her coffee cup, and he feels like he ought to have something profound to say, something remarkable like her. But then she tilts her head forward slightly, hair tumbling about her shoulders as she attempts to hide behind a layer of it, trying to hide the wet sheen of tears he spots in her eyes, and his mouth is moving without his control.

"You are so beautiful."

Her mouth drops open, a delightful pink hue settling on her cheeks as her eyes fly back up to his. Okay. Not what she had expected him to say. It's not quite what he had intended to say either, but he won't take it back.

"I…" She trails off, laughing when she has to reach up to wipe a tear away. "I don't know what to say."

His eyes are darting about her face, trying to memorise it all, precious new memories, comparing her to the eight year old ones that have become fog and mist floating hopelessly in his mind. Nothing about this feels real.

He can't believe he had ever given up on her.

"How long have you been out?" He asks, because he has to know- just how much longer he should have held on before losing hope.

"Um," she presses her hands flat against the table, fingers trembling, "about a year. A year next month, I think."

A year.

If he'd held on for one more year. One more year of empty conversations with her father and sitting outside the hospital and feeling this deep yearning in his chest to screw the rules and just _see _her to replace the vast nothingness of the world around him.

If he'd held on for one more year-

"Hey."

He looks up, sees her slide her hands forwards slightly, not far enough. Her hesitant, guarded eyes spill secrets he longs to hear.

"Thank you. For looking out for my Dad. And for this," she says, tapping the cover of Heat Wave which sits between them on the table, "it was, God, Castle- It was extraordinary."

There's so much earnest in her eyes, a desperate need to comfort him, that he forces his shoulders to relax. Later. He can beat himself up about it later. But right now she's here and she's _real _and oh _God _he wants to kiss her- He needs to kiss that pink mouth, smudge the sadness away, the nostalgia, replace the dusty memories with the new.

She seems to catch it, eyes settling on his own lips and for one wild moment he considers leaning across and just kissing her like he longs to. But then her eyes flicker down to her hands and she retracts them from the book, wrapping them around her coffee cup and leaning back in her chair, leaving him with nothing but the faint smell of cherries swirling with the steam of the dark brown liquid.

"What are the chances, huh?"

She looks up at him from beneath her hair; shy, cautious. He doesn't like it. This new version of her. So unsure of herself. Kate Beckett was always assertive, certain. She wasn't afraid like this. At least, she refused to show it, and as much as that infuriated him at the time, it saved him from a wealth of fear, of pain. Because that look in her eyes is so unlike her and it _hurts._

Is that what they did to her? They were supposed to make her better. Whatever that meant. Whoever they were. But now she's all beauty and shyness and it breaks his heart. Her uncertainty.

"Yeah." She murmurs. "What're the chances?"

"So, you, uh, you live in the city?"

"Sure do. I stayed away up until a couple months ago. My Dad and I lived in his cabin in the middle of nowhere. It drove me nuts."

She grins when she says that, something wider and inherently brighter than before. It makes his own returning smile less forced, far more genuine than he had expected.

"I'll bet it did."

"Yeah. But it was nice. My Dad and I are closer now. He stopped drinking two months after I was released and he's been sober since." Kate confesses, eyes shining with pride. He itches to reach out and take her hand. "I know it's been uh, eight years since um… But I was wary of coming back to the city. Just in case. I think sometimes people recognise me, but they're not quite sure from where, but I guess I'm not exactly in the position to, uh, complain."

Eight years.

Eight years have passed since their eight days together and he is still hopelessly in love with her and the way she shines.

"I tried to help your Dad. After… After, uh…"

"After you stopped driving him up to see me?"

He startles, even though he shouldn't really be surprised, even though he'd known on that last day that he'd driven Jim up there that she'd figure out something was wrong.

"It's okay, Castle." She says, and his guilty expression must be showing because she leans forwards, elbows on the table and compassion leaking through the pores of her skin. "It's okay. I swear."

"He… He changed his phone number. Moved away. Never told me. I thought- I mean he told me- But I guess…You're his daughter, so-"

"Castle."

He takes a deep breath, looks up into her eyes.

"I told him to do that. It wasn't his choice, it was mine. He liked you, Castle. Still does."

Oh. She- She told him.

Of course she resented him for giving up. Of course-

"Hey. Stop zoning out on me here. Guilty doesn't suit you, Castle."

She's so incredibly light-hearted about this. Lips quirked at the corners, parentheses curling gently. He's so incredibly in awe of her.

"I'm sorry."

She frowns. "For what?

"You know what. For giving up, ever letting you hand yourself over in the first place-"

"Woah there. That was my decision, Castle. You could never _let _me do anything." She says fiercely. "And I didn't… Castle, you don't get to be sorry, only I do, for ever taking so much of your life away from you. That's why I told my Dad to stop talking to you."

"I- I don't understand. You asked me to look out for him."

"Six _years _Castle." She says, something glittering in her eyes that could be tears or guilt or regret or maybe all of them combined. "I- I meant… I don't know what I meant. Something small. Just checking in or- or something. I don't know. But I know that I didn't mean for you to give up six years of your life. For it to take your daughter giving you an ultimatum-"

"Jim told you about that?"

"Of course he told me, Castle. He sat me down and explained it like you needed a reason to give in after six years at all. But you never needed a reason other than you wanted to live your own life. You- You never needed to stay, Castle."

He remembers a finite infinity in a hospital room eight years ago.

_"Will you stay, Castle? Until they come?"_

_She is selfish. She shouldn't be asking this of him._

_But he melts against her, lips brushing her neck as he speaks._

_"I'll stay."_

He sees a finite infinity in her eyes.

"I thought…"

Kate takes a sip of her coffee, sets it down on the table with barely restrained anger in her eyes.

"Me being in that place was meant to solve everything. You were supposed to move on. You- God, Castle, it's been eight years. You should've found a woman who loves you the way you're supposed to be loved and you should've stopped obsessing about me through your writing and you should've _moved on. _Why the Hell did it… Why the Hell did you let me take six years of your life, Castle?"

And in this coffee shop on the corner of a Manhattan street, under the gaze of her guilty eyes and watching the clench of her jaw, the secrets spill from him, and it feels like breathing for the first time in eight years.

"Because I love you."

Her hands curl tighter around her cup, blinking quickly to rid her eyes of the tears. He feels his own throat thickening with a layer of tears, and even though it feels like breathing for the first time in eight years, every movement of his lungs feels jagged and awkward, out of place. Something piercing his chest with an unforgivable malevolence, something that felt like how she looked at him when she abducted him.

"I loved you then and I love you now and I loved you between everything that's happened and it never stops. It never _stops, _Kate. You think I wanted this? You think I wanted to lose so many years of my life?" He hisses in a whisper at her, wary of the other customers in the shop. "Because if you think I wanted that, you're wrong. And I'm _sorry_ if that disappoints you but it's true, Kate."

She swallows harshly, throat bobbing while she stares at him and he needs her to say something, anything, or three little words that will fix his heart forever.

"No. I- You don't… I'm the one who's sorry." Kate whispers, pressing her palms into her eye sockets. "I'm not- Castle, I don't deserve this."

"Maybe you don't. Maybe you deserve worse. Or maybe this is less than what you deserve. But it's what we've got and it's ours and it matters. And it's always mattered, Kate, and it always will."

Kate startles on a breath, reaching out to grab her copy of Heat Wave. "I can't do this." She says.

"I don't think you have a choice here, Kate." He returns.

She gathers her things, standing from the table in a rush but he stands too, gripping her wrist and for the first time grabbing her doesn't result in him winding up on the floor with aching limbs.

"Tell me you don't still feel it, Kate." He murmurs, staring down at her as she trembles. "Tell me you don't still feel it and I'll move on."

"We barely knew each other."

"After everything we've been through you're trying to use that crap?"

"It was one night."

"One night in the weeks we knew each other."

"We didn't even know each other for a month, Castle."

"We've known each other for eight years, Kate. Eight years I've waited for you to come back, even if it didn't seem like it, even if you didn't want me to. Even if I didn't want to."

Her face contorts into one of pain, her pulse drumming wildly beneath his fingertips and oh God her skin is so smooth, and he remembers- He remembers everything so vividly. It's no longer lost on him now. It's back and she's here and he needs her to stay otherwise he doesn't believe he can survive another day.

"Tell me you don't feel it, Kate." He grinds out, and even as he's saying the words he feels her defences slipping.

She steps closer, book pressed against her chest with one hand, the other tangled with his when she presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

"Thank you, Castle." She whispers. "But eight years is such a very long time."

She presses something into his hand. A napkin.

"Think it through. Properly. Think of everything you could have. Everything you deserve."

Her eyes raise to his.

"You don't deserve me. You deserve better. You always have."

She walks away then, curls bouncing as she walks, morning light cradling the fine architecture of her face. Devastatingly beautiful.

And he holds her number on a napkin in his hand and suddenly things seem a whole lot more confusing and a whole lot more hopeless.

* * *

**TBC**


	7. Chapter 7

**promises in pencil**

Shoutout to Audrey, who bullied me into writing this.

* * *

Her heart is pounding so quickly in her chest she thinks it's going to break her ribcage, shatter all of her insides with broken bones so that she will implode quietly, rapidly.

New York has never seemed so cluttered, so suffocating before, but now all she can see in front of her eyes is _him _and she needs to get away. She needs to get away, to some space of her own, so that she can damn well think clearly and accept what just happened- But there's so many people, so many surrounding her, thrumming with blood and oxygen and they keep appearing no matter how many crowds she stumbles through.

"Hey lady, you okay?"

She jerks when a man grabs her by the elbow, spinning her to face him amongst the rush of New York.

He must see her panic, or something else there, something she doesn't want to think about- like all the ways she knows she could've taken him down for that dumb move- because he raises his hands, palms facing forwards, unfamiliar yet strangely honest eyes studying her carefully, and she finds herself pausing to hear him out. Her heart still pounds wildly in her chest and her legs still feel like they're going to give out any moment, and she's pretty certain she can't speak because tears are clogging her throat, but she stops.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. My name's Josh Davidson, I'm a doctor."

Huh. Okay. She hadn't expected that. But that does explain the self-assured, confident way he'd grabbed her.

She clears her throat when she realises that he's waiting for a reply. "Uh, I'm fine. Honestly. No medical emergency here."

His lips tilt slightly, like he's not sure what to make of her, but before she has a chance to question it he's speaking again.

"Well, it doesn't look like it to me."

She doesn't know what to say to that, so she presses her lips together, waiting for him to leave her alone. Part of her wants to tell him to mind his own business, another part of her knows how she can get that message across, but she simply balls her hands into fists by her sides and waits for these thoughts to pass. She knows how to resist acting so impulsively now. She knows how to fight it. And it's hard, and it's hurts that she has to do such a thing in the first place, but she always manages: She just has to count down from ten and remember how hard it was for her to work to be out, to remember those dreams she had of her and Castle walking hand-in-hand through the hospital gardens.

"You want me to call you a cab? It's far more peaceful than walking." The man- Josh, was that his name? - offers.

"I, uh, yeah. Thanks." She replies hesitantly, knowing he's right.

The man tugs her over to the side of the street, and his six foot frame stands out over any others trying to hail a taxi, and almost immediately one is pulling over beside her. Four wheels and an awful yellow colour of relief.

"There you go." Josh says, opening the door for her, and for the first time she is struck speechless by the kindness of a stranger.

She hesitates, not knowing what to say, words that she feel she ought to say tangling together on her tongue. Josh watches her curiously, smiling kindly, and she wonders if this is the kind of man she would've wound up with if her mom had never been murdered, if she had never killed so many, if her damn brain hadn't been so broken that she couldn't process that what she was doing was wrong, that she still has trouble accepting what was so bad about it sometimes when she presses her ear against the wall of her apartment and listens to her neighbours, searching for a sense of normalcy.

How on earth had she ever found Castle?

"Thank you." She manages to stutter out before slipping into the taxi.

"You're welcome, uh, hey- I never got your name."

She smiles as best as she can. "No, you didn't."

Then she's leaning over and telling the driver her father's address, remembering how her name sounds on Castle's tongue.

* * *

"Kiddo?"

Castle looks up as his mother hesitantly enters the room. His study is bathed in darkness. Blinds drawn, technology off, with Castle sitting and staring into the abyss of nothingness. He can tell she's worried. She's always worried. He knows that's why she's lived with him all these years, despite the success of her acting studio, despite the chances she'd had to move away from him. He can't imagine he's a very hospitable man to live with.

"Oh, darling, what's with all the macabre?" Martha says as she pushes the door wide open, unleashing light into the room that hurts his eyes.

He sighs, leans back in his chair and rubs a hand across his eyes. "It doesn't matter, mother."

Martha comes closer, rests a hand on her son's shoulder. "I know a flair for dramatics runs in the family, but this is more than that, Richard."

He presses his cheek against his mother's waist, feels her stroking a hand through his hair comfortingly. She doesn't push him now, waits for him while he breathes her in, that smell of alcohol and stale perfume that has always comforted him despite being the oddest mixture in the world. It reminds him of his childhood, of cramped apartments and not too much money, but the way his mother always managed to make him smile anyway. Before the complexities of life really settled on his shoulders, too heavy a burden for him to possibly bear.

"It's Kate."

His mother's hand falters for a moment, but other than that, she doesn't show her shock. She continues stroking his hair again, like she did when he was a child having nightmares.

"I saw her."

"I thought you weren't allowed to visit her."

There's no judgement in his mother's voice, and that's something he'll always be thankful for. She understands why he can't let go, in ways Alexis never could. And he knows she hates seeing him like this, or how his life has been a complete standstill for eight years, but she's never told him to snap out of it, to move on. She has always understood. And he thinks she always will.

"I didn't visit her. I saw her in a coffee shop. Such an outrageously normal place." He spits out roughly.

Martha hums lightly, weathered hands pressing against his cheek so that he'll look up at her. She's watching him carefully, waiting for him to break, and he hates that his mother has had to see him this way. It was okay when he was a child, when he had a grazed knee or a black eye from one of the kids at yet another new school, but as a man in his forties it doesn't feel so good anymore. He just feels ashamed.

"What happened, kiddo?"

He closes his eyes, trying to focus on her hand against his cheek instead of falling back into hurtful memories.

"She was so angry at me for waiting, mother. So angry. And disappointed."

"Not the flattery and swooning that you expected?"

He can't help the upward tug of his lips at that one.

"Surprisingly not, no. But she- I tried to make her see why it was worth it. But she just kept saying how she didn't deserve me, and that I deserved more. And maybe that's true, but that doesn't mean I can stop loving her. That doesn't mean I have to. Does it?"

Martha's sad eyes regard him carefully. "No. No it doesn't, darling."

He pulls away from his mother, leaning back in his chair as she lets her hand drop to his shoulder again.

"She gave me her number. But she told me to think about whether this is what I deserve. And it just feels like I'm going to spend the rest of my life chasing after her, mother."

"And you don't want that?"

He clears his throat, looks her in the eye when he speaks.

"The worst part is that I would spend as many lifetimes as it takes chasing her, so long as she'd let me catch her in the end."

* * *

"I still don't understand."

Kate stops her pacing with one hand on her hips, the other mid-air as her father interrupts her speech. She stares at him incredulously, even though he just watches back with that same calm, indifferent expression he always wears.

"Don't understand what, Dad?"

"Why, if you say you don't deserve him, you gave him your number." Jim points out plainly.

She groans, spinning on the spot and begins pacing up and down again while he father watches, amused.

"Because I still- I still have this stupid, childish hope, you know? And it's dumb and pathetic and I don't even know what I'll do if he _does _call, but I just… I had to. Even though it doesn't feel right."

"Katie."

She pauses in her pacing, turns to her father again. Hears the pain bleeding through his words and it catches her off-guard for a moment, struck by how deeply her father feels. Their relationship is stronger now, sure, but it will never be what it once was, before all of this. She'd forgotten that they were both more than a man who drank too much and a woman who cared too little.

"Dad?"

"I'm not gonna tell you what to do, Katie, but… The man waited six years for you. And I doubt he's even moved on these past two years. I'm not saying you owe him anything, Katie, but if he loves you that much, and you still feel something for him too, then what's the harm in trying?"

Kate sighs, pushing a hand through her hair as she moves over to sit with her father on the worn couch.

"I'm bad for him, Dad."

"You're better now, Katie."

"I am to him what drink is to you." She says quietly, picking at a loose thread on her sweater. "So no matter whether I'm better or if he waited for me, and no matter how good it feels, I'm always going to drag him back down again. And I can't do that to him, Dad. I can't."

Jim sighs, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as he pulls her in for a half-hug. "You've been out for almost a year now, Katie. Maybe this is what you need."

"It isn't what he needs."

But that doesn't mean that she's not disappointed when a week passes and he doesn't call.

* * *

**TBC**


	8. Chapter 8

**promises in pencil**

* * *

Two weeks after it all, he finds himself staring at a blank word document, out of words.

He doesn't have to write. There are no deadlines. He'd sent the manuscript of the latest Nikki Heat to Gina last week, was waiting for her feedback patiently, before he could even begin to think of what would happen next in the series. But even though he doesn't have to he – some part of him, he feels like he needs to. Words have always made things make sense before, and he knows that they can't solve everything, but he needs to get the jumbled thoughts out of his head.

Forty minutes later he gives in, dons his coat and shoes and finds himself grabbing a cab to his only other hope.

Alexis greets him at the door with a happy grin, used to the way he'll often find himself at her apartment when his mind is mulling over things he can't make sense of. She pulls him into her apartment without hesitation, happily chatting away while he hangs his coat up on the stand and waits patiently as she makes him coffee.

"I didn't disturb you, did I?" He asks once she presses coffee into his hand, leaning against the kitchen counter.

She smiles brightly, his wonderful, happy daughter. Carefree. "Nope. I was just reading a paper."

He nods slowly. Right. His wonderful, happy daughter also has a demanding, scientific job. He's proud, of course he is. Sometimes he wonders if she allows herself enough time to have a social life of sorts; he's no doubt that Alexis has friends, she managed to balance work and friends throughout her entire school life as well as college, but he hopes she sees them, enjoys life beyond the realm of words he doesn't quite understand. He can't quite think of a time he's turned up here and she's been out. It scares him.

"Right. Anything interesting?"

"Dad. Come on. Anytime I tell you what it's about, you zone out on me." Alexis says with a laugh, leading him through to her front room, sitting with him on the couch.

She's done good for herself, with her life. Of course, his own money had helped her get there, but her ambition and sheer intelligence really boosted her ahead. Twenty-five years old and she's in a far better place than he had been, physically in this apartment and mentally. He's proud. Really, really proud; so much so that it clogs his throat with feeling, makes his heart shudder in his chest at the intensity of it.

"What's wrong, Dad?" She asks quietly, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear.

His shoulders drop, hands nursing the warmth of the cup. "I have a big decision to make, Alexis."

Alexis eyes him warily. "What kind of decision?"

He wishes that he had his daughter's sense of right or wrong, wishes that he saw the world in black and white the way she does rather than in bursts of colour, shades of orange and red and blue and green and every colour that could possibly ever be on the spectrum. It hurts his head too much, hurts his heart and he's sick of it; sick of Kate, what she does to him, how neither of them want this but he can't help his reaction to her. He wishes he could. If he could, he would make it stop. He doesn't think that would make a relationship healthy.

Wishing he could stop it – That's not love. That's not what they deserve.

Is it?

"A tough one," he tells her, looking away. "One you'd be against."

Alexis sighs, resting her elbows on her knees. "Kate."

The vehemence behind her name digs deep into him, spools his insides. If only Alexis knew how Kate had suffered for her. If only –

If only a lot of things. He has no time to waste upon what could've been, should've been, but never will.

"Yeah," he echoes. "Kate."

"Is she out?"

He drags his eyes to meet hers. "I didn't mean to meet her again, Alexis. I wanted to move on as much as you wanted me to move on. But she's out, and it's been two weeks, and I have her number and… It's hard, Alexis."

"Why do you have her number, Dad?" Alexis asks, judgement settling in her words.

"I bumped into her in a coffee shop," he says, lips tilting at how mundane it is. "Alexis, would you love me any less?"

Her eyes flash – Bright, fierce. "No. Never, daddy."

He wraps one arm around her shoulder, ropes his daughter into a half-hug even if it's different to what it once was. She's older now, self-assured and he is crumbling, weary. But she fixes something in him nobody else ever will, soothes his heart when he least wants it, deserves it.

"But you'd be disappointed in me."

He mumbles it into her hair.

And so they sit. Quietly.

Alone.

* * *

She's sitting on a swing set in a park when he calls.

She knows it's him without needing to check, without needing to ask. Nobody calls her – Her dad knows better than to bother her after a therapy session and she's lost within the labyrinth of her own mind, and there's nobody else who _would _call her. Lanie, the boys; she doesn't know if they know she's out, and as much as she wishes she could speak to them, she holds herself back. They already went to the ends of the Earth for her, helped her cover Castle's ass about the murder too. She can't drag them into anything else.

And so she sits quietly and alone on a swingset, heart racing as her fingers fumble for her cell. She doesn't know what to say when she answers, so she just presses the cell against the shell of her ear, eyes wide.

"Kate?"

His voice is quiet, hesitant, and she slumps against the metal of the swing, curling her hand around it for support.

"Hey, Castle."

It's relief and disappointment and love wrapped together in two words. She bites her lips, wonders if he can hear it in her voice too.

"Two weeks."

"Yeah," she says lamely, watching as kids flutter past her, playing and carefree and it aches. "Two weeks."

"I wasn't going to call."

It stings a little, her eyes watering but she breathes through it, counts down from ten. Of course he wasn't going to call. She knows that. She knows how much of a big deal this is to them – not solely to them, but how big a deal it is period. Who on Earth would voluntarily want to be in love with her, anyway?

"I didn't expect you to," she tells him honestly, quietly. "But I hoped."

"You did?"

"Yeah," she says, heart aching at the awe in his voice. "Castle, I missed you. I still do."

He's silent for a moment, and her eyes stray over to the children playing and laughing as her feet drag against the ground, setting a rhythmic swing. It lulls her, distracts her if only the smallest amount. She doesn't know what to say, what to do, had never expected this, even as she dreamed to be enough for him. And she still isn't, she knows this, but yet she hopes. How foolish of her.

"You know how I feel, Kate," he says, voice low and ghosting down her spine, making her shiver. "This is hard."

"I'm not – I'm not expecting anything of you, Castle. You don't need to do this to yourself."

"I know. But… You are a mystery I will never be able to resist, Kate. You always were. And if you could tell me how to make it stop, if you could tell me where the off button is, then I would do it, Kate. In an instant."

Her eyes water and she closes her eyes, pressing her palm flat against her thigh and pushing down hard. It hurts, it'll probably bruise, but she can't let it simmer inside of her until it boils over. She is volatile, she is messy. She needs to release it, release the pain, as she bites her lip and pushes and the tears cling to her eyelashes when she opens them again to find the world has not stopped moving like she thought it had.

"I wish I could tell you, Castle. I wish I could."

She does. Even if it's the last thing she'd ever want.

She never wanted his love in the first place. She never wanted his devotion, she never wanted eight years of his life. But she was given it and then she'd thrown it away in his face, thrown it away in the hopes of being more and that still isn't quite true. Sure, it's been a year since she had been released and her life is better now. Peaceful. But she isn't more. There's still blood on her hands. So much blood that it drowns her.

But she's selfish. And she'd keep his love, give him her own if she could – If only. If only she were enough.

"What a mess we are, huh?" She finds herself saying.

She hears him chuckle on the other side, makes the corners of her lips lift up into a half-smile even though everything's just so sad.

"Yeah," he echoes. "What a mess we are."

* * *

**TBC**


End file.
